Pucks of this kind are conventionally used in ice hockey games. The rubber-elastic material gives known pucks an optimum weight that ensures good handling during play. Because of the elastic properties, the boards of the playing field can advantageously be incorporated into play. The sliding resistance of the rubber-elastic material on ice is sufficiently low to permit fast, long shots with the puck sliding on ice. The flexibility of the rubber-elastic material ensures that the risk of injury to the players from the puck is limited.
Ice hockey pucks must essentially be made of a homogeneous body since because of the kinetic energy of an impact when playing off the boards, there is a serious danger of individual attached parts of the puck breaking off.
Pucks are also known to the inventor in which rotatable balls are inserted, said balls projecting down from the faces of the disk-shaped body. These elements are intended to permit advantageous movement properties of the puck on surfaces other than ice, for example on sport hall floors made of wood or linoleum or on asphalt. A rubber puck would not slide on such stick because of the adhesive friction between the rubber and the surface. The spherical rollers are intended to allow the puck to roll easily along the surface of the ground. However, even a small amount of contamination in the bearings of the spherical rollers could impede their rotational freedom and interfere with the movement properties of the puck. There is also the serious danger that the rollers, mounted rotatably in the puck, could come loose during play because of the high forces acting on the puck, and be catapulted uncontrollably at high speed out of the rubber-elastic body of the puck. This poses a serious risk of injury to the players.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,366,219 teaches a puck for indoor or street hockey, with whose body sliding elements made of a hard and low-friction material are permanently connected, said elements projecting out of the rubber-elastic material on one sliding surface of the puck. The sliding elements are assembled to form a structure in the form of a ring, with the rubber-elastic material injected around them. The insertion of the circular structure into an injection mold and the subsequent injection constitute a very expensive and cost-intensive manufacturing process.
Finally, ice hockey pucks are known from EP Patent 0 273 944 which have a recess in the middle for a light source and an energy source, with light channels filled with highly transparent plastic extending from this recess to the circumferential or marginal surface of the puck. These pucks offer the additional advantage during play that they are very much easier to see because of their illumination.
It is desirable to improve on a puck of the type recited at the outset in such fashion that it is suitable for playing hockey on surfaces other than ice, especially for indoor or street hockey, it does not have the disadvantages described above, and it offers other advantages during play.